


Like Raising a Baby Hoofbeast

by Ryo Hoshi (Hoshi_Ryo)



Series: Catching Flies [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, F/M, Gen, Human/Troll Society, Interspecies Parenting, M/M, Other, Parenthood, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Reincarnation, Troll Culture, Trolls on Earth, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 11:19:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1603268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoshi_Ryo/pseuds/Ryo%20Hoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Expatriate Darkleer led a quiet life as one of the oldest--if not the oldest--residents of the Houston enclave, tending to the horse ranch that had belongs to his quadrants and himself, waiting for their Descendants.</p>
<p>He was not expecting to find himself raising a wriggler of another species, but when somebody left a pair at the entrance to his home, he was willing to try.</p>
<p>He'd handraised orphaned baby hoofbeasts.  It couldn't be that different, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Raising a Baby Hoofbeast

**Author's Note:**

> While this belongs in the same universe as _With Honey_ , it is probably going to be taking place entirely before it & few if any of its Harry Potter elements will turn up since while the Wizarding World may have given up trying to hide the Homestuck-type trolls from the muggles, but that hasn't meant they gave up hiding themselves.
> 
> As a result, this can be read as an independent story.
> 
> (Also: Sorry, Damara and Rufioh will not appear in the story's present. Their ill-defined relationship with Darkleer/Horuss just happens to be sticking around long after their deaths...)

Darkleer had a fondness for Houston’s adarcach enclave, and he knew he had somehow found himself in a position of great respect among its residents.  It was, he suspected, simply the effect of being one of the few adarcachs old enough to be hatched in the enclaves of the Old World.  It had, tragically, once been so much easier for their kind to migrate across borders, and they had even on occasion been forcibly imported, though now even the most pro-adarcach doddits were against importation…

This would be appreciated a lot more if they weren’t earnestly of the belief that adarcach wanted and ought to be returned to their Ancestral homelands.  Darkleer wondered sometimes if they understood what E%patriate _meant_.  He had heard that things had improved in the sweeps since Her Imperial Condescension had disappeared, but that merely made it not _as_ worse compared to elsewhere.

He was rather certain that he would not have gotten to enjoy his deeply rewarding relationships with Rufioh and Damara if he had stayed.  The Dolorosa and he had been among the first adarcach to arrive in the New World, and ironically the Signless’s teachings had been followed better in this land where at first the only free adarcach were ones who had escaped.

Back in the homeland, for his wings the Summoner would have either been culled as a mutant or consigned to the temple as of Bona Dea’s sacred matesprits.  The latter might not have kept either of them from meeting the Handmaid, as her presence would have been permitted within, but certainly Darkleer would never have been unless he too had been chosen for the Bona Dea’s quadrants.

Instead, both had hatched in the New World.  Rufioh had even been one of the first adarcach hatched in the Houston enclave’s creche; his horns had been taken as a good omen for the budding enclave, too.  When he’d pupated with wings, it had just made him all the more the enclave’s darling.

On the other hand, Damara had hatched quietly, in a then-hidden enclave of escaped adarcach up in California.  She had made a name for herself when she was older, helping those adarcach who had been brought from Asia to the New World as cheap labor, then treated like so much unwanted trash.  That had been what had caused her and Rufioh to meet.

Darkleer would forever insist that he’d been there simply because that steam engine was _his_ design and he happened to be fond of it.

They’d tumbled through each other’s quadrants, mostly around Houston, until old age carried first Damara and then Rufioh away from him.  He knew that their Descendants would most likely hatch within the same creche Rufioh had, though, and he hoped that maybe he’d live long enough to see them.  He still had the horse ranch that they’d owned together, carefully kept and cultivated…and he knew that just handing it over to the next Megido or Nitram himself was the only way still to ensure it stayed with their lines.

He did not expect to be around for his own Descendant, though as Houston changed and shifted his land had become the strange heart of the adarcach enclave.  It was even one of the few places in any adarcach enclave that Darkleer knew of that actually got doddit tourists, even with the sign only having one word in Doddit letters—’Zahhak.’

The sign was also a popular place for doddits to abandon boxes full of young puppies or kittens, so Darkleer was not surprised to see the cardboard box sitting there.  He supposed they did it because of that strange insistence some doddits had that adarcach would eat such.  Darkleer wasn’t sure why, though it was one of the less insulting rumors.

He was, however, surprised to discover two young doddits in the box.

It was not like he was unfamiliar with the rumors that they would eat doddits.  He had, after all, hatched back in the Old World.  He just had not expected to see it again, so far away in time and space.

Darkleer picked up the box very carefully.  It would not do to accidentally kill the two; doddits and Jadebloods felt the same about grubs.  Darkleer never had found out if they were indifferent species-wise, and after knowing the Dolorosa he was quite supremely uninterested in ever finding out, too.

The two looked like twins, though Darkleer was rather more familiar with that when it happened in hoofbeasts.  That meant they ought to have the same linename, but it also caused a bit of a problem.  He knew doddit wigglers grew differently from adarcach wigglers, so simply dropping both off at the creche to be raised there wouldn’t work…and only Crowwing of the Jadebloods would likely be tempted by the challenge.

Darkleer supposed he could raise one.  He’d handraised baby hoofbeasts before.

It couldn’t be too much different, right?


End file.
